Her Melting Point

New Trouble

"Are you sensitive to smells?" Jackie exclaimed. "I haven't thought of it! And I'm wearing perfume! It'll stick!"

"I'm OK with your perfume," he said. "It's the same as before."

"Before when?" Jackie threw him a confused glimpse.

"Ten years ago."

She'd stopped wearing her favourite Noa by Cacharel soon after she'd married Gabe. He'd joke that it made it seem like she'd 'fallen from the turnip truck,' which in her native vernacular would simply mean 'chav.' She'd bought a bottle when she'd come to Fleckney, which was what Alexander was recalling, since it had been planned that she'd have to stay on her own for the first year. After the divorce, she'd ordered a new one online, overpaid thrice over, and used it almost every day.

"I do have hyperosmia," Alexander continued. "But I like your smell."

Jackie dug her heels into the gravel and stared at him.

"That's– that's a tad too familiar, innit?" she stammered.

She just couldn't accept how easily he could spout an admission that intimate! 

"Have I overstepped?" he asked. "I struggle with boundaries. I'll apologise if I did." He paused for a second, and then added, "And I'll do better next time."

Jackie exhaled, deflating. After all, that was the most constructive approach a person could have in a relationship - to hear out the other side, to apologise, to compromise, and to improve. Except, he should save it for someone his age - and worthy of all the work he was willing to put in!

Also, she could be just reading too much into it, she strictly told herself. Maybe there was nothing sexual in what he'd said, and she was the pervy one to get excited about someone sniffing her.

She shook her head and started walking, when he gently pulled at her elbow.

"There are three turns left," he said and gave her an enquiring look.

Jackie peered back at him, signalling to him that she hadn't got the foggiest what he meant by it.

He sighed and asked, sounding almost exasperated, "May I kiss you?"

"What?! Of course not!"

He nodded and headed towards the exit. It took her a couple of seconds to pull herself together.

She told herself that she was the problem here, and the daft stinging in her eyes was entirely her fault - and that 'of course not' was the only correct answer to his ludicrous request.

He waited for her cab with her; and as soon as the car showed up around the manor, Jackie jerked his jacket off and pushed it into his hands.

She mumbled, "See you next week, at the school meeting," and climbed into the cab.

She didn't even hear his answer, because her ears rang, her face burning in suffocating humiliation. When they were almost at the gate of the Hall's park, she looked back. Alexander still stood on the same spot; she could guess by the ghost of his white shirt that his jacket was thrown over his arm.

***

Jackie spent the next day unpacking more of her books that had arrived a few days prior; as well as putting up the multitude of her paintings and art prints; and generally faffing about.

She kept thinking back at Alexander's spartan office in the ice cream parlour; and while her hands moved, her brain was stuck in a loop of excuses and explanations to the sheer amount of stuff that she owned; and how every object was meaningful; and that she wasn't a hoarder. The word had been applied to her only once - and utterly unfairly - but she, of course, recalled it every time the topic of home decor popped up. And then she'd remind herself that her furnishings had nothing to do with him. If everything went well, she'd end up buying the cottage from him; and even before it, she could hardly imagine him barging in to check on her up-keeping of the house and to judge. She wasn't completely hopeless: she knew it was no one's business but hers how she lived her single life, alone, on her own, with the items that belonged to her, which she paid for with hard work and an ungodly amount of stress. It just didn't stop the never-ending internal monologue - with occasional bits of utterly fictional and a hundred percent unrealistic dialogue - buzzing in her noggin.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to her extra large, triple, two-door, glazed, oak bookcase, her beloved Edwardian book trough tucked against her hip, like a loyal sheepdog; when a doorbell rang through the cottage. She'd only finished one shelf, having rearranged the volumes twice; and then she'd gotten distracted by her Grandfather's tatty copy of Andersen's fairy tales.

Jackie gently put the Andersen on the revolving library table, which she was planning to later drag closer to her sofa; and walked to the hall. She only remembered that she could have checked the lock camera on her phone, when she opened the door and stared at a small redhead standing on the threshold. She recognised the woman immediately.

"Evening, Jocelyn. I'm Eddie Sparrow, I'm Stephen Bassey's wife. May I come in?"

The woman had a rapid confident manner of speech.

"Evening." Jackie's heart was thumping somewhere in her throat. "Please, please... um, come in."

She stepped back and to the side, as if under hypnosis. Her uninvited guest took off her anorak, revealing a charming Picasso shirt and tight trousers, hugging her taut backside and long slender legs. Jackie fought the urge to tug at the hem of her old uni sweatshirt. Unlike Jackie, Ms. Sparrow clearly knew what to do with her ginger locks: her short hair was stylishly done, the long fringe swept across her forehead. She had large, bright blue eyes, currently emphasised by tasteful heavy makeup: black eyeliner and fluffy long eyelashes, which ignorant Jackie would assume, but couldn't know for sure, were fake. Overall, on top of being a successful, talented, and hard-working person, Eddie Sparrow had an excellent sense of fashion and make-up skills, and clearly worked out regularly. That made perfect sense in Jackie's mind - and brought an immense relief. Stephen deserved the best partner one could have.

"We should sit down," Eddie announced and marched into Jackie's kitchen. "You should start a kettle. We've got a lot to talk about."